The Daily Beast Podcast - Has Wall Street Completely Lost Its Mind?

Episode Date: April 27, 2021

Fast-falling apps, valued at billions of dollars. Governments printing up untold trillions in debt, just so they can buy it up themselves. Bitcoin knock-offs, soaring. Literal shell companies, all the rage. Has Wall Street (and the whole damn financial sector) lost its collective marbles? If you haven't heard, every single week The New Abnormal does a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast’s membership program. where Sometimes we interview Senators like Cory Booker or the folks who explain our world in media like Jim Acosta or Soledad O’Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner and sometimes its just discussing the fuckery. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast Inside member where you’ll support The Beast’s fearless journalism. Plus! You’ll also get full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Jongfast, and welcome to The Daily Beast, The New Abnormal. I'm a left-wing pundit and an editor at large at The Daily Beast. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. Our world has been turned upside down. On the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and figure out how we get our out of it. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure everything doesn't go too far off the rails while we have fun discussions about our world gone mad. And while I take

that duty seriously, ourselves not so much. Today we have a jam-packed episode with Mondare Jones, one of the first openly gay African-American congressman who's in his first term serving New York 17th district. And then we will have Dr. Peter Hotez, who's a vaccine scientist and anti-science combatant. On to talk to us about the latest in vaccine distribution. But first, we have New York Times columnist and Squawk Box co-host Andrew Ross Sorkin. Welcome, Andrew Ross Sorkin to the new abnormal.

Thank you for having me. I feel abnormal right now. Me too, man. I am very excited to get to talk to you. I feel like the last time I got to talk about inflation was with Paul Krugman. And it was many months ago. I mostly only ever talk about diseases now,

which I also quite enjoy as a hypochondriac. I'm one, too. So if you want to talk about that, I'm open to it. Plus, Paul Krugman is much smarter than I am. You know, I don't know that that's true just because he has a, you know, the thing is, once you get that Pulitzer, he has a Nobel. He's a Nobel. He's a Nobel and a Pulitzer. So let's just, let's be honest here.

I'm talking. Well, when you're his age, you'll have that. Can you explain to our listeners why all of a sudden inflation is the hot topic? Well, so the inflation. has been the hot topic and now probably is the hot topic because there has long been a great concern that the more government stimulus you put into the system, that ultimately what it may do is push up prices, the cost of eggs when you go to the supermarket, the cost of a TV, if you go to a Best Buy, the cost of going to a restaurant, getting on an airplane, that

ultimately, the more money that's pushed into the system, is going to press up the price of goods. And so at a time when there is enormous amounts of stimulus being talked about and being put into the system, and then on top of that, obviously, a big conversation now about infrastructure, there's a question mark as to whether all of that spending is going to have an impact on inflation. And the person who has been sort of the biggest, you know, sort of the one who has been like dying on this hill as Larry Summers. Larry Summers has been concerned about inflation for not just the

past year, though he's been very outspoken about it, but he's been somebody who's been worried about inflation for a very, very long time. Look, there are two schools of thought about inflation. There are those who worry about inflation and worry about government stimulus and also the amount of debt in the system. That's a huge part of this, a huge part of the conversation around inflation is just how much debt is in the system. And there are those who are now thinking about this sort of idea of, you know, modern monetary policy, which is to say that maybe, you know, debt isn't as problematic or as worrisome as some people had long thought. And so that's really the chasm. That's really what the debate is all about right now. I should say modern monetary

theory, I think, is what is. It's not policy. I apologize. us. M.M.T. Right. But it was kind of an outlier. Oh, I would say up until even just a couple of years ago, this whole MMT idea was, you know, people thought most, I don't want to say respectable people, but people in the academic worlds, people in the money worlds thought it was cuckoo for cocoa puffs. Right. To think that you could just spend, spend, spend, spend, and that the rubber would never meet the road. And, you know, we had so many people for years who have been deficit hawks who've said, You just can't take on this money because at some point there will be a moment where people who have to buy this debt are going to say, you know what, I'm not sure you people are good for the money anymore. So if you want me to buy your debt, you're going to have to pay me a lot higher of an interest rate to effectively pay me for the risk I'm taking on because I don't know if you people ever are going to send me a check.

That's what this is really about. Right. And when that happens, the whole thing falls apart. That's where things get a lot more uncomfortable. Right now we have remarkably low interest rates. People are willing to loan money to the U.S. government for next to nothing because people have thought that we are a good credit. The question is, are we a good credit? And as you pile up larger and larger deficits,

that's where the question gets more complicated. I also note that the truth of the matter is, especially during this past pandemic, given the amount of money that we are printing, it is actually not that there are people out there, folks in China or elsewhere or other countries that are somehow buying our debt. That's actually not what's happening. Do you know who's buying our debt? The Federal Reserve, our own Federal Reserve is buying the debt. Wait, that doesn't sound good.

Well, it depends on it. I mean, it's where you're sitting. As an economist myself, no, I'm just kidding. That's what makes people nervous when you're buying your own your stuff. Some people would say you're smoking your own supply, right? Right. Why are we buying our own debt? Because the truth is that it's not clear somebody else would. And every other country around the world is issuing their own debt. So there's a massive supply of debt that's sort of rushing into the system. And the truth is that in the EU, they're doing the same thing. They're having to buy up their own stuff. And so we're in this sort of unique moment. You could argue that because everybody's in the same moment here doing. practically the same thing that maybe it cancels each other out. And so maybe we're not supposed to worry. But these are the big questions that the warriors worry about. Yeah. Are you worried about

it personally? I am, but you have to know two things. First of all, I'm a warrior by nature. Yeah. Not Jesse and I. And I remember, look, I wrote this book many years ago. You hopefully remember called Too Big to Fail about the financial crisis. The phrase too big to fail historically was used only in the context of banks. It was actually the first time was ever uttered was back in 1984 around a bank called Continental Illinois. Today, we don't talk about banks being too big to fail. We talk about municipalities, cities, states, and countries being too big to fail. So yes, that's why I'm worried because I know that every financial crisis is the function of too much debt in the system.

and it's no longer simply that a bank or a company has too much debt, but that some of these states and, again, municipalities, and in certain cases, countries may have too much debt. And every crisis is one of those crises, a crisis of confidence. It's exactly what we was talked about. At some point, somebody says, these people are not good for the money. And maybe they either stop buying the debt or if they're going to buy the debt, they're going to charge a lot more for it.

And at some point, if the U.S. government has to pay out, a lot more for access to debt. It becomes very complicated for us very, very quickly. So that doesn't sound good to me. Tell me something that makes me feel a little better about this. So Paul Krookman, who is much smarter than I am, will tell you, stop it already. Don't worry. Why are you worried? What is wrong with you? That's what he told me. And by the way, Janet Yellen would say, stop it already. There is nothing to worry about here. you shouldn't be measuring how much debt you have next to GDP and saying that that's a problem or it's not a problem. What you should be doing, they would tell you, is say, look at what the price of debt is today,

meaning what kind of interest rate do you have to pay to get people to buy the debt? Now, I would say that some of this has all been perverted in part because you have people like the Federal Reserve buying their own debt. Right. But there's an argument that they're making. and at least in the short term, I will tell you that they have been 100% correct on this. And for those of us who have been even worried about debt for the last decade, but were we wrong? So, you know, it's hard to say. It seems to me like we're seeing some of the 2008 lending coming back.

I am less worried about a sort of 2008-style crisis per se and more worried about a bit of maybe 2001-ish kind of dot-com, bubble-licious, everybody's spending too much money, and at some point, you know, people wake up from this fever dream and realize that the whole thing was insane. So, you know, when Dogecoin, you know, is how people are making money and they think they're investing, they think it's entertainment, I don't know what they think. First of all, it also makes a mockery of, you know, Bitcoin. and crypto. If you ever thought cryptocurrency was a serious thing, you do have to have a little bit of skepticism because what, you know, what the heck is going on with this thing called Dogecoin?

But I think that there's that. There's SPACs, you know, every, every celebrity and every Wall Street person and their brother wants to run a SPAC. There's people that throwing money. I want to run a SPAC. Yeah. I happen to know what a SPAC is because I made my long-suffering husband explain it to me six times, but we need you to explain a SPAC for us. I'm going to try, but it's probably complicated on purpose. A SPAC is a special purpose acquisition company, otherwise known as a blank check company. You might say, what the heck is that? So effectively, an investor, let's say, I'll pretend I'm starting a SPAC.

So Sorkin's starting a SPAC today. I'm going to go out and tell investors that I'm raising half a billion dollars. give me $500 million for my SPAC, my blank check company. My blank check company doesn't do anything. It only has one purpose in life. Its purpose in life is to go find another company to buy with said money. You've given me the $500 million. I may, by the way, lever that up or get other investors in the future to go acquire some other

business. Typically, that's a private company. And because my SPAC is a public company, I'm raising that money in the public markets. and I have a stock. Effectively, I'm going to buy a private company that's effectively going to go public through a backdoor of sorts by merging with my public SPAC. And then I'm going to disappear with all the money. I'm going to take 20% of the company, by the way, for doing this. That's my service fee, which is outrageous. And now this company that I just bought is a publicly traded company. I'm probably going to buy a company that shouldn't be public, by the way, has no earnings, has projections out, you know, to 2,000. And because everybody is so excited about the stock market, someone's going to buy into it. By the way, I should tell you that the bloom has fallen off the rose here. The rose has fallen off the bloom here. Which is it, by the way, the rose off the bloom off the bloom.

The bloom has come off the SPAC rose a bit in the past couple of weeks because I do think, thankfully, there's been a bit of a realization about some of the challenges and conflicts and misalignments that have occurred as a function of this market. and the SEC has sent some public letters and other things that I think have spooked people. It probably had a good way. So the SPAC mania is a little bit less of a mania at the moment. Well, that is, I have to say, probably the one bright spot. So to back up to Doge, Crander, I know you are often in touch with the elites and are getting the sense of them.

Of the elites, the elite. I keep wondering what, you know, GameStop and all this is. doing to make these people, like what their reaction is to this stuff? And like, what are they thinking like that this is so wild when they used to be able to control things so well for the past few years? The quote unquote establishment thinks this is zany. It's nuts. They don't understand it. They can't put their head around it. And they believe genuinely that this is going to end in tears. That is the establishment view. However, there is maybe a new establishment that's emerging. and that is retail investors.

That's a younger generation of investor. That's the Elon Musks of the worlds and Chamath Polyhopatias of the world. And, you know, there is a growing group of people who think this time is different. And maybe this time is different. Maybe it really is different. I don't know. But that's, you know, I think there's a sense of bewilderment within the world of the establishment. But also, remember, you know, they miss, you know, they miss buying people.

Bitcoin at, you know, $100 and $1,000 and $10,000 and $20,000. Now, we'll see what happens to some of this stuff. Do you think that there's also, like, Clubhouse is super overvalued, right? Oh, goodness. You know, the truth is I don't know about Clubhouse. You know, it has a $4 billion valuation. There was such excitement around it. I was on it.

I felt like almost every other night for like a month. Right. I will admit, I have not been spending nearly the kind of time I used to. And if you look at the number of app downloads in the app store, you know, there was a massive surge January, February, and it is just completely and utterly fallen off a cliff. Yeah. They're about to be introducing an Android version for the first time. So people, by the way, who had an Android really had no access to club us.

So we'll see. There might be a second honeymoon, if you will, but at the same time, there's going to be a lot of competition. Twitter's doing it with this, you know, spaces. Facebook wants to do something similar. I think ultimately the sort of live audio piece will probably be a commoditized service that lives in many places. And that's not to say the clubhouse won't continue and won't thrive. Look, I think there are a lot of people who wrote Snapoffs, you know, the parent company of Snapchat.

And, you know, I think they had an IPO at $15 billion. I think it fell in half at one point. I think the company is now worth something like $100 billion. And they're having success with maybe not the kind of audience that people thought were, was going to be at the same scale in size as, you know, Google or Facebook, but they're having some, clearly having some success. God, that's nuts. Market cap of Snap today is about $90 billion.

So I was off about about $10. But, you know, you can round up. The thing that I talked to Kugman about that he's kind of obsessed with, and I'm curious to know what you think of, are the child tax credits, which are not permanent. Right. What do you think about that? What you're feeling on that? Look, in an idealized world, they would be permanent.

and in an idealized world, we would have enough money to pay for everything. You know, we're in this moment now where we're going to probably have a grand experiment where we're going to spend a lot more money than we necessarily have. Having said that, by the way, you know, something similar happened even when times were good during the Trump administration, which is to say that, you know, we lowered taxes. And yes, that did, I don't know if we're going to give it credit for happening. During his watch, obviously up until the pandemic, happened, there was enormous economic growth. Do we want to tie those two things to lower taxes?

We can have that debate. But it was true that that obviously happened. I think there's probably a larger conversation to have in this country about how much money we actually need to spend and how to raise the money to do that. What do we want to cover? How do we create a equitable society that drives economic growth, that takes care of people who can't take care of themselves, and to tax people in a way that makes sense, that incentivizes people to do the right things, that incentivizes potentially longer-term investments, but also gets a lot of money that, frankly, has never been taxed. So, I mean, I think we have to sort of figure out what we really want,

because, you know, there's two views about taxes today. I would say one view is you just want to tax people so that you have enough revenue to pay for the things that you want to do. There's another view, which is that people want to tax people, especially they're wealthy, because they don't want them to be as wealthy. Those are two different concepts. And I think we have to make a little bit of a call or decision about which concept as a country we like and we want. I would also say before I'd even get to this conversation about higher taxes and this and that, I would just try to collect the money. money that's due to begin with. Right. There is something like

$600 billion annually, $600 billion the study show that is evaded, that should be collected, that isn't collected because the IRS doesn't have enough people and enough technology to actually collect it. If we brought that money in, we probably wouldn't have to have all of these

crazy conversations we're having right now about everything else. And that's just the Trump families. Sorry. On that note, thank you so much, Andrew. This was amazing. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here and feeling so normal being abnormal.

Thank you so much. That was great. Hey, folks. If you haven't heard, every single week we do a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast membership program. Sometimes we interview senators like Corey Booker or the folks who explain what's happening behind the scenes in media like Jim Acosta or Soladadad O'Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite.

comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner, and sometimes we just have friends around to analyze what's happening in the news. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast inside member where you'll support the Beast fearless journalism, as well as getting full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member, head to newabnormal.com. That's New Abnormal.com. The DailyBeast.com. Congressman Mondair Jones represents New York's 17th District and is going to talk to us about a bunch of different subjects, but most of all, what's next on the Democrats' legislative docket? Welcome to the new abnormal congressman, Mondare Jones.

Thank you for having me. I'm so thrilled to be here. I'm so excited to have you for any number of reasons, but the biggest one is that you have Nia Lowy's seat. I do have Nita Lowy's seat, and I'm so proud to have succeeded a giant in Congress and to have hit the ground winning, as they say. I'm representing parts of Westchester County and all of Rockland County. This is the community that raised me. And I'm really thrilled that people are paying attention to the important work that I'm doing.

I'm pretty excited about you, you shot to fame in a viral video. One Senate Republicans said that D.C. wouldn't be a, quote, well-rounded working class state. I had no idea there was so many syllables in the word white. But you're way more than that. But first, let us have a moment to talk about the viral video because as someone who has long, long, long, disliked one Tom Cotton, I think it was a pretty incredible moment. Can you talk to us a little bit about it? Well, we are and we're in the midst of a very robust debate about making Washington, D.C. a state. It is a community of over 700,000 people who are being taxed without voting representation in Congress.

It is a long-suffering battle that has been waged by people like delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton. And of course, the community of D.C. is overwhelmingly black and brown and more populous than states like Wyoming and Vermont. to hear Tom Cotton join the chorus of bad faith Republican explanations for why we should not make Washington, D.C., the 51st state. You know, talk about how it wouldn't be a so-called well-rounded working-class state. It got me worked up because it is clear that the effort to deny the franchise to the people of Washington, D.C. is part of a long, line of efforts, including in Georgia, where SB202 became law and what's going to be happening, it would appear in places like Texas and Ohio of disenfranchising, of denying the right to vote to people of color. And I had enough. And I said as much on the floor of the house.

I was so impressed by that. But even before you went to Congress, you did something really impressive that I just want to take us back for a minute to talk about because there are a lot of listeners who really hate Postmaster DeJoy. Can you talk about this a little bit? When I was in the general election of my campaign for Congress last fall, I figured I would do what I could to help advocates of our democracy. I did so without obviously having been elected myself to Congress. I successfully sued along with a few other plaintiffs. the Postmaster General in Donald Trump. We did that in the Southern District of New York and federal court,

and we got a nationwide injunction requiring Postmaster General DeJoy to suspend his proposed operational changes that were meant to subvert a free and fair election last fall. And I'm really proud of that work because democracy hung in the balance, I think was an example of how you don't have to be in elected office to be helpful on a number of levels. But you are also a lawyer and you did work in the DOJ. So you do have a lot of experience here. Can you talk to us a little bit about being the other thing that I really want to talk to you about, is this you are one of two African-American LGBT congressmen.

Is that a lot of pressure? And what can you do with that? Because it seems like you have a chance to really do exciting stuff. Molly, it is not something that I imagined was even possible to be an openly gay LGBTQ member of Congress until the past few years. And I'm really proud to have made that history with someone who I consider a friend, Rishi Torres of New York's 15th Congressional District. I grew up in the Baptist Church where things have gotten better, but it's still. a bit taboo and just never saw on television positive representation of openly LGBTQ African-American individuals. And so it took a long time for me. I mean, I say a long time. I'm still one of the youngest members of Congress. Yeah, I was good to say. I'm 33 years old, but it took me longer than it should have and for most of my life anyway to really accept who I am and to express that to the rest

of the world. And I'm so grateful to be in a position now where I can give that positive affirmation to other people young and old, because I get messages from young people and people older than I am telling me that I have inspired them to accept who they are and to live authentic lives. And that is a beautiful thing for someone who just a few years ago was definitely afraid that people would find out that I'm gay. Yeah. So one of the things that you support that I'm very, very interested in is expanding the Supreme Court. Could you talk to us about the need for that? Our democracy is in crisis. It has been in crisis for over a decade now due to racist voter suppression that has been successful in parts of this country. What I want people to understand is that the Supreme Court has been an accomplice was the Roberts Court and Chief Justice Roberts himself who wrote the opinion in a case called Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, which struck down the heart of the V. Rights Act.

There are a number of things that were extraordinary about that. One of them is that the Voting Rights Act had just been reauthorized in the year 2006 with unanimous support in the Senate, near unanimous support in the House of Representatives. Talk about judicial activism. And Robert said in his opinion that discrimination was a thing of the past. And of course, just years later, we are seeing how that decision allowed for the racist voter suppression bill to become law. in Georgia recently. Literally, you can trace, you can trace this back to that 2013 decision

because Georgia would have had to go through what's called a pre-clearance process before that bill became law. And I feel pretty confident that DOJ would have prevented, would have not given its approval. But not so. And so we are seeing voter suppression on steroids now. Of course, the Roberts Court also gave us Citizens

United, which allowed for a torrent of unlimited corporate spending in our elections. As recently as the year 2019 upheld partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts where essentially legislators choose their constituents as opposed to constituents choosing their legislators. And that decision has helped and will continue, if unchecked, to allow Q&ON conspiracy theorists

and other folks like Marjorie Taylor Green and Law & Boehler to continue to win general election content. despite their views being outside of the mainstream. You gave an interview today to a stat at the New York Times, and you talked about Congress as a place where members are very comfortable with the status quo, as long as it benefits them. Can you talk about that a little bit? That interview was in the context of H.R. 1, also known as the For the People Act,

also known as S-1 in the United States Senate, which still needs to pass this democracy-saving legislation. It is my number one legislative priority. because if we do not pass this bill, if people are allowed to disenfranchise large swabs of the American electorate, black and brown people, young people, and working people, like what's happening in Georgia, not only will we never have Democratic majorities moving forward, but we won't have a democracy, most importantly, a multiracial democracy where people in Congress are actually responsive, or an electorate. as opposed to what we have now where not a single Republican voted for the American Rescue Plan, despite the fact that 80% of the American public, including a majority of Republicans, support the American Rescue Plan. That is a distortion of our democracy. This interview was given in the context of some members of the Congressional Black Caucus,

of which I'm a part, having reservations about independent redistricting commissions as one of the major provisions of HR1 and just the generational divide that can sometimes come up in policy debates. And so I'm grateful to be bringing another perspective of someone, as someone who won as an openly gay, black, progressive candidate running in the majority white, affluent suburbs of New York City.

I don't need partisan gerrymandering to ensure my victory. And I know that some of my newer colleagues who are more junior in the Congress feel the same way, and know that to be true. Can you talk to us about modern policing and what we can do? We must pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. It is not going to be a panacea for racism and policing. That is a more difficult and larger project,

but it would still be a major strive forward in the direction of ending racism and policing and obtaining racial justice and equal treatment under the law. The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act would, as it was passed in the House, eliminate qualified immunity for law enforcement officers. Qualified immunity as a doctrine that was made up out of thin air by the Supreme Court, and it allows police officers to evade legal liability. Even when it is clear, they have.

violated the constitutional rights of civilians. It would also end no-knock warrants, like the kind that led to the death of Breonna Taylor, as well as end chokeholds. And it would critically create a national registry of police misconduct, because what's been happening is people are leaving police departments, oftentimes in disgrace,

and going to other police departments. We're hired by them. So I look forward to passing the George Floyd Justice and Policies. Act or seeing it passed in the Senate and getting it to Joe Biden's desk, we need it now more than ever. And it is frankly just a real shame that there was even any question about what would happen in the trial of Derek Chilvin. That is where we are. And I'm grateful that increasingly white people are seeing these issues of racism and want to do something as well about that. I mean, as you know, we have Democrats have a very slim majority in the Senate. Do you think,

And it seems like Republicans have made Tim Scott their appointment on this. Do you see him picking this up? You know, this gets to the issue of the filibuster. Right. Why we need to abolish it. Because we should be passing the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act as it was passed in the House without watering it down in any way. You know, for the time being, it's a wonderful thing that Senator Tim Scott is interested in this issue. I listened to another senator from West Virginia, Senator Capito, talk about how she was pleased with the work that he was doing.

And I know that Karen Bass has been working very closely with Senator Scott. And so I want to respect their work product and just wait to see what they come back with. Yeah. Okay. So that's good. I mean, you didn't come in in primary and incumbent. You came in, you know, as she was retiring. But do you feel a rift between the more progressive?

younger congresspeople and the older establishment or now? I started out as a primary challenger. Oh, you did? And then the retirement happened. I don't see that ripped. We've been so unified for all the public reporting of the rift between progressives and moderates. You know, we voted for the American Rescue Plan, the most transformative economic packets for working families in modern American history.

And of course, we should have included the $15 minimum wage in that. And it was included in the House version, which Democrats and moderate, which progressives and moderates voted for. And so the Senate really has been a major issue, the major issue when it comes to making legislation better and more purposes. I'm part of the Democratic House leadership team. I'm honored that my colleagues in the freshman class elected me to represent them as freshman representative of leadership. and I'm given the opportunity to express their views as well as progressive views in those meetings with leadership. And so I don't see the rift as it is related in a lot of the articles that come out. I was actually speaking to a moderate member we call people who flip seats from red to blue front line members.

And I was speaking to a front line member who was a good friend of my member. recently she's more senior than I am. And she said, you know, there was, there's just more unity this congressional term. And there was the last congressional term. Well, we just had Howard Dean on Thursday. And he was saying how much he loves AOC and how Democrats are actually really, you know, so we're definitely, I definitely have seen that in my own experience that there, there seems to be a lot of unity.

And it's very cool, too. So that's very interesting. A huge part of this, Molly, is that progressive policies are deeply popular with the American public. And Joe Biden understands that and has been pushing for big legislation. You know, I'm looking forward to making the American jobs plan better than what was proposed by him. But if you look at the contents of it, I mean, he's going in the right direction. It is a climate bill, as much as it is an infrastructure bill. And of course, the two are not mutually exclusive.

There's a lot, as you know, that is infrastructure. This was so amazing. I hope you'll come back. I promise. Okay, good. What's crazier than QAnon, more outlandish than Pizza Gate, and scarier than a Mexican getaway with Ted Cruz? The answer is what the American right wing has planned next.

Be one of the first to listen to fever dreams, the new podcast from The Daily Beast tracking the conspiracy slingers, orange acolytes, and straight-up grifters pushing to retake power. Every Wednesday hosts Swin Subisang and Will Summer, check in on the movement of the radical right.

Head to the DailyBeast.com slash podcasts or your favorite podcast player to catch the first episode and get subscribed. That's fever dreams, which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts. Dr. Peter Hotez is a vaccine scientist and anti-science combatant, as well as the author of Vaccines Didn't Cause Rachel's Autism.

Welcome back, Dr. Peter Hottas. Oh, thanks for having me back, Molly. You were such a great guest. We had to have you back right away. In demand. More importantly than your great guestness, though you are a great guest. There's a lot going on with COVID right now. Yeah, although you could say, when has there not been a lot going on with COVID?

That's part of the problem. This is not the gift you want to keep on giving. No, it's certainly true. But it does feel to me and tell me if I'm right that COVID has all of a sudden become a foreign policy issue. Well, you know, the truth is always was. We swept it under the rug because, you know, we were also consumed about what's going on in the United States. It's like peeling away the layers of an onion. It's only now that we started to see the light at the end of the tunnel as we vaccinate the American people that the administration can even look around and see what's happening across the world. Can we just start by talking about India because I feel like that's captured the headlines of this weekend? Yeah, no, India's so scary.

And, you know, I've got many great colleagues that work in India. And we're doing a lot of work in India. So our vaccine is being scaled for production in India by Biological E because a lot of people don't know this story. But India is really the vaccine producer for much of the world. So a lot of the, even before COVID, a lot of the vaccinations that people get in Africa, Latin America across Asia are actually vaccines produced in India. They do it with very high level of quality through WHO World Health Organization pre-qualification. They're really good. But the numbers are pretty awful. We're talking about 350,000 new cases a day. Those are recorded cases.

I think there's no way to know the real number of cases. It's likely, we know from the U.S. experiences at least four times as high with a complicated country like India with over a billion people, it's probably six or seven times higher. And we're hearing reports that the deaths are being grossly undercounted. So it's a full-on humanitarian catastrophe going on in India right now. And Modi, just to quote Howard Dean, who was on last week said, he said Modi is Trump with a little bit of brains, basically, that he has been quite Trumpy in his leadership, like allowing mass gatherings and yeah i don't have detailed knowledge i know he's many accuse him of being excessive in terms of hindu nationalism but you know i i don't have any direct knowledge what i do know is you're

right they are they are definitely continuing political rallies there's also important religious festivals going on in india right now and and that brings lots of people together and then we have the maharashara variant which is a uh a variant of concern that is likely more transmissible and higher morbidity or mortality. So that's the perfect storm, just like what we had in the United States. And it's going to be really daunting the container. I mean, even on a good day, a lot of the health system in India or the hospitals is on the verge of being overwhelmed.

And now you see just the horrific pictures. And, Molly, that's what we learned in New York a year ago. That's the first thing we learned about COVID-19, that when hospital systems get overwhelmed, that's when mortality levels really skyrocket. And that's why so many people lost their lives in New York City last year. And that's why we worked so hard about implementing social distancing. It was to prevent repeating those surges in New York City. Now this is happening on a massive scale across India.

In addition to the fact that there's outright shortages of oxygen, there's run on oxygen. And we know that's what this virus does. it causes profound hypoxemia, and that's also adding to the mortality. So it's just catastrophe upon catastrophe. And it breaks my heart because so many of my colleagues are from India, so many of my medical students, graduate students, families are from India. So I feel like there are people that I know and love, and it's so sad for me. One of the things I've read about, and I'm curious to know what your take on this,

or if it's too early to know, was that there's, that India sort of felt that they had escaped it. They sort of had half of their adults had gotten it, but very mildly, and that now they're seeing reinfection. Yeah, and I think it's a wake-up call for what could happen in sub-Saharan Africa as well, because their first wave, by many accounts, it was also modest in terms of what we saw in northern Europe. And now there's a variant of concern going across Africa, the B-1-351. I know the numbers are a pain, but that one could potentially cause the same thing in Africa

as what's going on in India. And this is why we really have this urgency to get out, durable, low-cost, easy, breezy vaccines. And now, I mean, we can't, we can't screw around. We need to have the vaccines in place ready to go immediately. I don't know that listeners totally understand why if a virus is ripping through a country like India. Can you explain why that's bad for someone in Duluth? Well, for multiple reasons. One, that variant is, first of all, is not going to stay in India and reports already it's going into Pakistan and Bangladesh. And in this highly interconnected

world, it's just a matter of time. This variant is already, the Maharashtra variants, already in the United States or something very much like it. So that's a concern. Also, it allows additional variance to evolve. And remember, we, the U.S. is part of a global economy. We depend on other countries in order for our economy to expand. And then it gets, then it can only go so high and then it gets blocked. So, you know, what I see over the summer happening is as the U.S. gets something very close to normal, people start flying domestically and doing business with other countries, they can really only do business with countries that have gotten COVID-19 under control and fully vaccinated. So how far can the U.S. get with doing business only with the U.K.,

Western Europe, and Israel, and maybe a couple of other countries? So what's going to happen is you're going to start to see the U.S. economy accelerate and then, you know, I'm not an economist, but I'm thinking it's likely going to plateau prematurely unless we can help the entire world. Well, and I also think fundamentally, the longer the virus is able to keep going, and I think that's something people don't totally understand, is that the more the virus goes, the more likely there will be a non-vaccine resistant strain. It's hard to know what looks like is happening is that you're seeing convergence, meaning that it's not as though you're seeing 100 different types of mutations in the spike protein, the part of the virus that binds to our, host tissues, there seem to be four or five recurring themes around certain amino acids in the 501 position, the 484 position, the 425 position. But the issue is going to be this.

It's almost like a new pandemic. It's version 2.0 where you have dominant variants of concern that are more transmissible, higher morbidity, higher mortality. So as bad as it's been in Northern Europe, you're going to see things play out in India in other parts of the world now. And that's why we've got to vaccinate. And we have to do two things. Vaccinate using our vaccines against the original lineages that are already ready to go. And that will help because they look like they look like they're all partially protective, at least against the new variants of concern. But then all of us in the vaccine world are

scrambling to make the next generation COVID-19 vaccine that are more specifically tailored for the variants. That's why Madeira and Pfizer are already saying, we're all going to get a third dose later on this year or next year. That's going to one help with booster immunity, but also it'll likely be reconfigured to be more specific for these variants of concern. What can America do for India? Because I know there was some pretty exciting news this weekend. Yeah, I saw an announcement coming from Andy Slavitt, someone have a lot of respect for indicating that they were going to loosen export controls on materials for making vaccines. So Serum Institute of India is making a lot of the AstraZeneca vaccine for the world.

Biological E is slated to make a lot of the J&J vaccine for the world. They're making our vaccine as well. So by lifting those export controls, India can gear up and make all the vaccines that it needs to make. There is the additional problem that Moody did put a restriction on India exporting its vaccine to keep it all in India. and we've got to figure that one out because the whole game plan dependent was relying on India providing vaccines for the world. And so that's got to be lifted fairly soon so we can get vaccine into Africa, a vaccine to everywhere else. What does it mean to be vaccinated? Do you're talking about being vaccinated in the U.S.?

Yeah, I'm fully vaccinated. My feeling is now, you know, I got the Pfizer vaccine, which has a 6% or 5% infection rate. and very, very high rate of preventing death or severe infection. So my feeling is I wear a mask to make other people feel comfortable, but I feel pretty comfortable going and doing normal activities. Am I wrong? The way I think of it is this way. It means one thing to be vaccinated now.

It's going to mean something very different when we're vaccinated over the summer. So let's fast forward to August, let's say, or July. By then, a majority of the U.S. population, will be vaccinated. We're still going to have these groups that are refusing. We could talk about that, but transmission will start to decline significantly. It's not going to halt because we still are not reaching the levels that we need, but it'll decline significantly. So when we're vaccinated, and you've got this dramatic decline in transmission, what that means is your likelihood of contracting the virus and getting sick if you're vaccinated is very remote. And that means that mask can come off,

that we can open up classrooms. Life becomes close to looking like it did in 2019. We can fly domestically. The things that we won't be able to do is we'll have limits in terms of places that we can fly because there's going to still be a lot of screaming transmission across the world. But other than that, and businesses won't be fully restored because they can't operate globally as much as they'd like to. But other than that, I think it'll look very normal and masks can come off.

The only reason that I still wear a mask, even though I'm vaccinated right now, is there's still a lot of, just to pull a pretty high level of transmission going on until we can get up to much higher than 40% getting a single dose. And that won't be long. We're talking about a period of weeks. And I think that's the one thing that's not being articulated as well as it could be that the recommendations put out by the C.E. on what you can do if you're vaccinated are evolving or will evolve as more and more people become vaccinated. And what I would have probably done is laid it out there. I would have said, this is we're now in phase A, then we're going to go into phase B and phase C. Phase C is what happens when the country gets close to fully vaccinated and we halt transmission. Then people can understand it. I think, you know, and you know, by not doing that, what it does is it lets, you know, people like Senator Rand Paul and others claim that we're only still wearing masks as sort of a badge

because that's what they do. They don't wear masks as a badge and don't get vaccines as a badge. And that's not the case at all. Yeah, I think that is a really important thing for people, because I feel like we're not explaining that well enough in the public health world of that like this is really about getting us to a point where enough people are vaccinated, so transmission is very, very low. And then we can all take off our masks, outside, at least. I think, you know, restaurants, bars, clubs, I think, I mean, look at what's going on in Israel right now. I think we can get to that same place.

And I think that should be articulated a little better. I mean, there are things that could go wrong, of course. Right. The variants. There are new variants. I don't think there, I think the B-117 variant is going to remain dominant for a while. And that vaccines work just as well against that. The one thing that will happen, I think that we have to keep in mind.

is even if we get to that place in August or July, let's say, where masks can come off and life looks like 2019 again, there may be periods in different times of the year where we have to put on masking again. And I say that because my colleague, Mark Lipsich, is this brilliant epidemiologist at a Harvard School of Public Health, has put out these very interesting model where he shows these peaks, seasonal peaks of COVID-19 in January, just like that horrible wave we had in We could have something like that. Again, not as bad, but still there. So there may be the advisory coming out. You know what? We're going to have to dial things back a bit, wear masks again, but it's only going to be for a period of a few weeks. And that's how we live with the virus,

being able to have situational awareness and close to the news. And it's not so bad. After all we've been through, this should seem like small potatoes to be able to do that. And that's why I see this playing out. This was really helpful. Thank you so much, Dr. Hottas. Oh, it's always good to talk to you, Molly, and always happy to keep the dialogue going. Thank you so much. Hello, Jesse Cannon.

Hello, Molly Jungfast. After this nice weekend we had, who is your fuck that guy? A beautiful weekend of freezing weather in the Northeast. I enjoy wearing a downcoat in April. It's one of my kings. We are here to talk about the fucking assholes who ruin our lives on a daily basis. And today I have one Alex Berenson. You're returning foe.

That's right. Twitter needs to take him off the fucking platform because this is, this person is, I mean, you do really, really, really see how misinformation spreads online by Alex Berenson. Is that fair? That's 100% fair. I see on Instagram, he says something. And then the biggest idiots I know have it on their fucking Instagram, like it's the word of God. Alex Berenson, I'm going to read you the two tweets, and then I'm going to tell you the truest, because it's important that we get this. So, another well-known person in his 40s, not a true celebrity, but someone with a sizable Twitter following died suddenly Friday.

No cause of death was given, and his family wants privacies. These cases have popped up with disturbing frequency since December. Look, I don't want to turn on the fire hose on this guy's family at a very difficult time. So I don't want to go into this, but this person publicly reported being vaccinated. Six days later, his tweets abruptly stopped, and less than a week after that, his death was reported. Okay, so Alex Berenzen is making this case. So the guy, this poor guy, Daniel Kaminsky, Kaminsky, I'm going to read you this statement that his family had to put out because Alex Berenson had deemed him to have died of the vaccine. It was with great sadness. I announced the

passing of my uncle, Daniel Kaminsky. While his passing was sudden and unexpected for us, Dan was struggling for years with diabetes and was even hospitalized because of it. The tragedy had nothing to do with the COVID-19 vaccine and unfortunately everything to do with diabetic keto I think Dan would laugh at the idea of conspiracy theorists promoting anti-vax propaganda through his death. But as his family, it hurts us to see his death being used to spread lies about a vaccine that he had full faith in. But like Dan always said to me, they're all just noise. So I'm going to take his advice, ignore the trolls, and respectfully ask the internet community to please give my family peace and privacy as we navigate a world without Daniel.

So this is from his niece. And Alex Berenson made this happen this weekend by spreading lies about a guy who died of diabetes and trying to make him into proof that the COVID-19 vaccine is unsafe. And so for that, again, and I will make him my fuck that guy until he stops doing this. Today, my fuck that guy is one Alex Berenson. You know, I was going to say something that I would have had to beat myself over. after that. Sorry. That was my most passionate one.

Because fuck that guy. Tell me who your fuck that guy is. My fuck that guy is a world leader. He may be the only man who has worse hair than Trump, one Boris Johnson. A man who always has a look on his face like someone's just told him

he has another kid that he's going to have to remember how many he has again, which he's incapable of doing, which is just astounding. One of my favorite things about Boris Johnson is that he can't answer. that one question. It really is like one of my favorite things. Like, you know, somebody who comes

from the music business, I'm like, hey, all those people I know can at least name all their children. But so Boris apparently said in a meeting in October about having another lockdown, let the bodies pile high in their thousands. I've become very convinced that one of the worst parts of our world right now is that our leaders put their careers before the people they serve. And that should really be the first question of every debate going forward. And this is just another thing where this fucking asshole is putting his stupid brand first when his brand is literally looking like he just woke up from a hangover to lead a country each day. And it's like unbelievable that these people are allowed to still rule over a country when they act like this.

Yeah. Fuck him. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics and science. We'll help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at thedailybeast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily

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